Exclusive: Get A Sneak Peek Inside Cat Deeley's Dressing Room At SYTYCD (And Get The Scoop On What She Wore Last Night!)

We've spent season after season drooling over Cat Deeley's wardrobe on So You Think You Can Dance?, so we were obnoxiously excited when Fox invited us backstage to get a glimpse inside her dressing room--and even more excited to find out the hot host works without a stylist!

Our gal in L.A., Jen Weinberg, paid a visit to the SYTYCD studio last night, armed with her iPhone camera (and a serious girl crush!) and got the skinny on how Cat gets dressed, where she turns for inspiration, and wearing $10 dresses on the red carpet.

For last night's episode, she rocked a vintage Tom Ford for Gucci dress (above), inspired by a recent run-in with the designer himself, whom she met on a British Airways flight: "I was going back and forth to England, so I got on the plane and saw him. And we got off the plane, and he looked equally as chic as the moment he stepped on the plane, 11 hours previously and a different time zone. He still looked like Tom Ford. I looked like Cat Deeley slightly falling apart at the seams. I was, however, working a black all-in-one jumpsuit with aviator shades. So, I met him as we got off the plane and we both got picked up by a car from special services. He was, without doubt, the most gentlemanly, handsome, stylish, funny human being I ever met. He opened every door for me, he touched the small of my back to lead me through, he opened car doors. He did just the right things, and I gushed afterwards. I was suddenly reminded of how lovely and wonderful he is." At least 10 years earlier, Cat had purchased her favorite Tom Ford piece--at the time he was at Gucci--to wear to her first-ever Brit Awards. "So I called my mom and said I said 'Ma, remember that dress that I packed up? The one with all the birds on it, the Japanese style with birds and flowers on it that I wore to the Brit Awards? Do you think you can find it?' And lo and behold, she did, and I brought it back to America with me."

Most of her on-air outfit choices happen that way, since she works without a stylist and usually chooses what she'll wear on the same day the show tapes. When she first arrived in the States and got the SYTYCD gig, her choice to dress herself definitely raised a few eyebrows. "No one ever verbally questioned my decision to style myself, but they would do this thing where I’d walk out my dressing room and some people would stare at me up and down. And you know they’d turn around and say I was mental. But then it became a thing. And I like the idea that you can do completely different things each week. And you shouldn’t try to change yourself or try to emulate anyone else."

So how, exactly, does she arrive at the outfits we see her in on-air? "Some days I can get up and I feel like yeah, I can rock a black leather mini dress today, and I can roll out my Debbie Harry attitude, and we’ll be good. And other days you want to be a bit ladylike, and other days you might be having a squeegee day, and every woman feels that way. And it kind of depends on how you feel that morning when you wake up and what you have to do for the rest of the day. And depending on both of those is how I make my selection." And it's not always fresh-off-the-runway-never-been-worn stuff: "I have this rack that have new stuff I haven’t worn on this show, but I recycle stuff and I wear a lot of vintage too."

The girl definitely knows her vintage--she scored a silver lamé number for ten bucks that she wound up wearing both on the show and to the red carpet premiere of Twilight: New Moon. "The zipper was broken, which is why it was so cheap," she tells us. "So I had the zipper fixed and had the hemline taken up to make it more modern. It was a funny length, it looked like something Jerry Hall would have worn back in the day at Studio 54 when she was hanging out with Andy Warhol." She's also a fan of affordable frocks from Zara, Topshop, and French Connection, and thinks being a slave to labels is as snoozy as we do: "The thing that’s much more interesting than wearing designer head-to-toe--and I am aware of the audience that watches the show, it’s young girls that can’t spend $5000 on a dress--is to mix it up as much as possible. So you’re as likely to see me in a Zara dress as you are a Tom Ford Gucci as you are a $45 vintage dress that I’ve taken the straps off of and altered the hemline. I try to mix it up a bit."

She completes the look for each show with hair and makeup, which she gives very specific direction on: "It could be like 'Think Talitha Getty. She’s on top of a Riad in Marrakesh and she can hear the distant call the prayer. She’s been up all night chasing the dragon. And she’s got that smoky eye that’s gone all fuzzy underneath. And she’s bohemian and hippie and luxe.' And they used to look at me in the makeup chair and laugh, but now they’re like...'Got it!' And then we have a glass of champagne, because we always have a glass of champagne. I love my job, I’m a very lucky girl."

Um, we'd say so! Can you gals believe how cool and down-to-earth and utterly chic Cat is? Are you fans of her wardrobe on the show? Will you tune in tonight (8pm on Fox!) to see what she wears? Check out the So You Think You Can Dance website now, then discuss!